Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Contested Sites : Commemoration, Memorial and Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Paperback / softback Book

Contested Sites : Commemoration, Memorial and Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain Paperback / softback

Part of the Studies in Labour History series

Paperback / softback

Description

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a new phenomenon in public monuments and civic ornamentation.

Whereas in former times public statuary had customarily been reserved for 'warriors and statesmen, kings and rulers of men', a new trend was emerging for towns to commemorate their own citizens. As the subjects immortalised in stone and bronze broadened beyond the traditional ruling classes to include radicals and reformers, it necessitated a corresponding widening of the language and understanding of public statuary. Contested Sites explores the role of these commemorations in radical public life in Britain.

Despite recent advances in the understanding of the importance of symbols in public discourse, political monuments have received little attention from historians. This is to be regretted, for commemorations are statements of public identity and memory that have their politics; they are 'embedded in complex class, gender and power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten)'. Examining monuments, plaques and tombstones commemorating a variety of popular movements and reforming individuals, the contributions in Contested Sites reveal the relations that went into the making of public memory in modern Britain and its radical tradition.

Information

Other Formats

£51.99

 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information